As I understand it - no for coding - yes for registering. All new bats should be registered - only recoding is needed if Ah of the battery is changed.

In case anyone is interested, I ended up taking it to an independent shop. I bought the battery from BMW (it was around $200) and the shop charged me around $30 to install it. They told me that they don't need to register it because they use a battery tender (never loses a charge). I got no error codes and has been running fine for over 2 weeks now.

Figured out- that blue connector on IBS is for data interface (don't know the exact BMW name for it). I used an Analog-Digital converter to see the digital communication signals, upon starting the vehicle. It had come off during battery installation, and I was wondering what it does before reconnecting it back.

I just had the dealer change my battery and register it, after long research and was tempted to do it myself, contacted many SA's and dealers as well as a couple of reputable Euro car shops in town all and I say ALL said the same thing, DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME and get it registered, many stories where things fail early if not registered, I bit the bullet and got it done, lot of things were starting to act up like the rear defroster wasn't working, the climate control fan was running at 1/3 speed and the was acting up by the varying speeds, I suggest if you start experiencing any electrical failures and you have not changed the battery in 4-5 years then do this first before wasting time troubleshooting other items first, good luck all.

1. The Bently Manual is a bit lacking in the picture category, this DIY, bueno
2. I have an E92, the cover on the + termainal is RED as others have said
3. My battery lasted 123,000 miles.... I shizer you not
4. This battery is friggen heavy
5. I still have to use my BavAuto tool.... TBC

I just called the BMW dealership as I need to replace my battery. They said if I have the white one, it does not need to be registered, only the black one. So, I am thinking I will just go buy the exact same OEM batter from BMW and just change it out myself, and not worry about the registration.

07' 335i
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BAT 720 CCA 90ah -- BMW WHITE & REPLACED WITH SAME FROM DEALER.
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COST 179.00
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Followed the DIY and It was good --- mine was missing the black butterfly aft pad that is connected to the long rear hold down bolt. Battery seems secure without it.
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Hardest part was simply getting it out. I did find that duct tape was very helpful in holding the +- cables out ot the way -- clean path for battery exit.
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Yes - mine did have the extra two-wire connector attached to nothing as the previous post mentioned.
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I did the simple battery adaptation with my BT Tool -- highly recommended for resetting basics / condition based service.

I replaced the battery in my 2007 E90 328i about 7 weeks back. Called the stealerships in Houston and all of them wanted around $450.00 to replace and register the battery and the battery prices varied between $199.00 and $239.00 for the 720 CCA 90ah battery. With a 10% off parts coupon, managed to pick up the battery for about $197.00 (inclusive of taxes and disposal fee). With my car parked in the stealership parking lot (I live 60 miles away from the closest stealership), I removed the old battery and installed the new battery in about 20-25 minutes. Used the INPA cable with Toolset 32 and registered the new battery and haven't noticed any differences in the car.

A friend of mine had a $75.00 battery installed by a local gas station mechanic on his 2006 E90 325i and didn't even bother to register the battery. His car has been running without any issues for over a year now. Several others have installed Walmart batteries and haven't had any issues.

So, I'm not sure if the battery really needs to be registered but I did mine anyway with the tools I had at my disposal. Only time will tell if I did the right thing or not.

Wish I was brave enough to do this DIY myself...woke up Wednesday morning to a 13 degree New York morning, but my car decided it was going to sleep in. Rest in peace original battery, stealership claimed it has less than 5% charge in it and was WAY below whats need to operate a car.

Wish I was brave enough to do this DIY myself...woke up Wednesday morning to a 13 degree New York morning, but my car decided it was going to sleep in. Rest in peace original battery, stealership claimed it has less than 5% charge in it and was WAY below whats need to operate a car.

Replacement battery + labor + tax...$509.

Replacing a car battery is well within any man or woman's capability. It's really easy and all you need is is a socket wrench, elbow grease, and office biceps. There is considerable debate about registering the battery - many have not done it and were fine (I'm one of them), others have interesting stories. I think the key theme out of this thread is get a battery with the same number of cold cranking amps, listed as cca on the battery. I'm pretty sure Walmart has the same size battery for a great price, I got mine from Exide, and I'm sure if you look around you can get the battery from several other places.

I just replaced my E92 battery yesterday. The car has just had it's Fifth birthday (registered Dec 2006.

I bought the car recently and thought that the sluggish battery was due to the fact that it had been sat on a cold forecourt for months. The battery was lucky to do 11 volts when cold, so I bought a Bosch model 96 4 year guarantee battery to replace it, from Carparts4less.co.uk

Cost of battery, 71 UK pounds, good I felt.

I also bought a cable from www.bmwcables.co.uk to do the registration, which cost another 25 pounds.

The result was good, and the registration below was particularly interesting. It worked first time, and also explains the difference between black and white batteries (mine was white conventional lead-acid), the black ones are the glass-mat ones which are newer tech.

This is from DIS software, which is used at the BMW dealerships, so it should be the last word on whether we need registration for a new battery....

We do.

Not only that, if the battery is different, such as capacity, to the old one, then it recommends the further step of recoding as well!!!!

I haven't tried that yet but I have the Progman software working too so I might.

Just replaced my 5-year old factory 90Ah battery with a $99 Walmart H8 - an exact fit, alomost the exact weight too. Many posts suggested 49R is the correct fit, even Walmart's little electronic guide tool says so, but in reality 49R is shorter than the 90Ah factory battery.

The battery compartment in my E90 has multiple mounting holes so obviously the smaller and more expensive 49R would fit too, but why spend more for less?

H8 fits many European cars so it has two vent holes, one on each end. The unused one should be plugged.

The 4x4 and brake warning light came on after I started the car, but turned off before I reached the end of my driveway.

The charging system appear to work normally - 14.9V right after starting the car, then drop to 14.6. It occasionally drops to 13.8V at idle as if to check the battery's open circuit voltage (I imagine). I have monitored the car's charging behavior on longer trips and can attest that there are indeed some intellegence in it. The voltage drops to less than 14V on longer trips, but this is not unique to BMW.

In the name of science, I will not register the battery. I'll report back in one year.

[/rant on]
I think the whole registration thing is overblown. Flooded cell lead-acid battery was invented before the Civil War and has been in wide use for more than 100 years. It's behavior is VERY well-understood.

Under some circumstances registration is needed - your car has the pseudo-hybrid "efficient dynamics" or has automatic engine start/stop - the car does need to know exactly how much charge the battery has and can hold.

The registration requirement should not be extrapolated to cars without the advanced features. I don't see how a sane engineer would design a charging system that need registration to not kill a regular flooded-cell battery.
[/rant off]

Hey all, new guy in town here... Just picked up an 07 328i with nav. I noticed after replacing the stock bulbs to LED with no error code lights for the angel eyes, the eyes didn't light up when unlocking the door, which I did have all the time for the past 2 weeks. i thought, that sucks, the LED bulbs I guess make it not work. Than googling and reading about the welcome lights not turning on, it trickled down to the battery threads. I seen how some said a weak battery is the problem. So I went home yesterday the long way on the highway, kept it steady and at a nice speed for about 15 minutes. Got home, locked it up, checked 5 minutes later and they turned on after I unlocked the door with the remote. So I concluded the battery is weak.
I wish I understood how to register the battery myself because I hate the fact that I just now got off the phone with a BMW dealer I picked out of a hat, and they said yes it needs to be registered due to the charging system will not know there is a new battery in it and keep charging the new battery much stronger as if the old weak one is still in there. So the price tag for that is $209.99 for the battery, 1 hour labor to register it@ $120, than old Uncle Sam tax on top of it.
I am thinking I will call a shop that works on foreign cars and see if they have the tool to do it and do more price researching.

Very informative post, but it gets too confusing on the conflicts of registering it or not.